Winey fingers

It's time to get out in the garden again, cleaning and tidying and making room for all that burgeoning spring growth. And maybe, even, a bit of weeding already.

These are my bleeding hearts last week; I love this stage, before the leaves turn green.

Bleeding heart, Lamprocapnos spectabilis

They look like little clasped hands, dipped in red wine.

This was last week. Now the stems are much paler, and the tips are greenish.

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Tiempo de ponerme a trabajar en el jardín, limpiando, rastrillando, tal vez arrancando los primeros brotes de las hierbas malas que siempre aparecen.

Estos son los nuevos brotes de mi Lamprocapnos spectabilis, el llamado "Corazón sangrante" por la forma y color de sus flores. Me encanta esta etapa, antes de que las hojas se pongan verdes.

En esta primera etapa, parecen manos unidas, bañadas con vino tinto. Esto fue la semana pasada. Hoy, los tallos son mucho más pálidos, y las hojas están de un verde rojizo.

Stalks and leaves

Because I loved the colour:

Beet greens

In my landlady's garden.

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Betabeles (remolachas) en el jardín de mi casa. Porque me gusta el color.

Decorator colours

The plumose anemone in my tank has a brown column and  beige tentacles, a common combination. Often, though, they are white on white; a white column, and whiter tentacles. I had never seen one with a green head before.

Plumose anemone, Metridium senile in the tidepool under the glacial erratic. With green tentacles.

I browsed images on Google; I found a few white "Mets" with pale green tentacles, always in photos taken during a dive. This one is in a few inches of water. And that was the colour as my eyes saw it; I used the flash, because the anemone was in shade, but those tentacles were a definite blue-green.

Another. This one has white tentacles, but the base is a pale blue.

This one matches the one in my tank. Some of the red blotches around it are tubeworm "flowers".

Another "normal" M. senile.

Deep under the rock, starfish wait out the dry spell. The flat, spread out anemone seems to be a burrowing anemone, with its mouth exposed. Must have just eaten something. Maybe one of those little fish?

More vivid colours. A deep pink tubeworm, still fishing while the water lasts. The pink-tipped green anemones below have shut down for now.

Even the hermit crabs are wearing party colours. I spotted this one with those bright blue pincers, like the one I brought home last week.

Three hermits, a dead kelp crab,and limpets. The deep red  critters at bottom right are not fish; they're shreds of seaweed.

Kelp crabs are usually a dull olive green, sometimes greenish brown. I don't know if this one was joining the explosion of colour in his lifetime, or if there's some sort of blue-green algae that took over his carapace and legs after he died.

This photo was taken aiming straight down into a foot-deep rounded hole. There are many of these near the bottom of the intertidal zone; circular holes, smooth-walled, looking like someone at some time removed a bowling ball from the rock. What causes this? I don't know.

I am always on the lookout for nice whelk shells for my hermits at home. Here, around this erratic, there are many whelks, all healthy and shiny, but no empty shells. And almost every hermit crab I saw was wearing a smashed and broken shell. What happened to the fresh shells?

I feel sorry for these hermits; the ones I brought home were quick to switch into intact shells; they do know the difference. I almost feel like collecting some decent shells from my tank and spreading them around this tide pool. Or would the tide immediately haul them off and slam them against the rocks until they were full of holes?

Questions, questions.

Magenta and blue-green

In a grey and white world, I walked on the salt-washed beach, and found colour.

Boot-top deep snow near Oyster Bay

Sand dollar test and stones.

The purple tones are what's left of the sand dollar's living colour. The green, I think, is algae.

The snow is still coming down.

The neutrals

More from my collection of "someday" photos; a sampler of muted greens and browns. Designer colours, for some. Easy on the eye, but maybe too easy if you're trying to find an invisible grasshopper or a lurking spider.

Cross spider, Araneus diadematus, in her web over the water between the docks.

Grasshopper, Oyster Bay.

Lichen, Cladonia sp., Oyster Bay. Almost matches the grasshopper.

This lichen is in a log at Strathcona Lodge, on Upper Campbell Lake. The little scaly (or leafy?) cone-like buds are intriguing. (Click for full size.) I wish I'd seen them at the time. The camera's eye is better than mine.

"Eye" in a log. Strathcona Lodge. I'm pretty sure there's a spider in there.

Dippers on sandstone, Woodhus Creek. They kept running under the water in the calm spots, where the caddisfly larvae were.

Sparrows, Tyee Spit.

When the light is right, even the water is brown. Sandpipers, off Tyee Spit.

Here and there.

Colour sampler

I am so organized! (And a serious procrastinator.) I have an entire folder of photos, each small group in their own folders, labelled, resized, and sharpened, ready to post, but "later". Photos that someday I'll have a use for. The folder is named "Hold for blog," and it moves forward from year to year.

I went to add another few photos a couple of days ago, and realized that now the folders filled the whole screen, and I had to scroll down to find the end. Time to use them, and/or downsize.

A bit of both. I deleted half, and here's the first instalment of the ones I decided to use.

Colours:

Blue and cerise: back door of Sybil Andrews' Cottage on a rainy afternoon.

Green and white: tiny flowers in a ditch.

Green, pink and yellow: garden, Strathcona Park Lodge.

Red and green: unidentified tree, down the street from home.

Orange: rotting stump.

Rainbow garden: marine worms, under the Campbell River docks.

More worms and sponges.

Red, grey, green: Val, my survivalist anemone, in the aquarium.

Green: Woodhus Creek, from the top of a cliff.

Mostly green: I call this "Dirty window bokeh." Blame it on Chia; I did wash that window, not so long ago!

More coming up, tomorrow. Water transport.

That's more like it!

After that brief foray into eye-sizzling sunshine and jarring colours, my eyes were pining for our accustomed greys and blue-greens. Luckily, it rained all day Sunday, and threatened rain all Monday. I grabbed a jacket and went down to Tyee Spit to watch the sky.

Looking northwest. There were quite a few walkers, all smiling.

From the inner edge of the spit, looking towards the Campbell River mouth. There's a heron hiding behind the grasses on the left.

A bit later, looking east. It feels like rain, and the fish are leaping out in the channel.

And here's the heron, watching me, but too lazy to fly away.

The heron in a more typical pose: looking discouraged. Herons are not happy birds, not even when they have a full stomach.

And overhead:

Into the wild grey yonder. Ducks, I think.

Five minutes from home.

A Skywatch post.

Glowing colours.

Saturday's delight:

Their perfume glows, too; I could smell them before I rounded the corner and saw them.

And Sunday's:

Golden jewel beetle, Buprestis aurulenta, dreaming of trees.

These beetles lay their eggs near injured portions of a variety of conifers, including our Douglas fir, red cedar and pines. The larvae hatch, then bore into the wood, live there for several years - up to 40 years! - burrowing through the tree, until they bore an exit hole and emerge as adults.

This species is the most damaging in its genus. Larvae have been known to take 30 years to complete their development in structural timbers. The emergence holes sometimes penetrate roofing materials which results in leakages. The Orpheum Theater in Vancouver was water damaged after "bargin priced" roofing timbers, cut from trees salvaged from the Taylor River fire on Vancouver Island, produced a large number of adult beetles which bored straight through the tar roof. (Forestry, UBC)

In the shade of the underside of the tablecloth, the colours are strong, but the glitter is gone.

Green or bluish back, with red or copper wing edges. The underside is a bronze colour. This one was about an inch long.

Not to be outdone

... by Ma Nature's brilliant colour ...

Street corner eatery, Mazatlan

Yellow? Green? Or...?

I bought a new monitor. It was about time; I'd been using the old one for going on 10 years. I noticed the difference immediately; this one is much clearer, even when the brightness is set to match. But I'm not so sure of the colours: at first, everything was tinted yellow, especially all the greens. I've calibrated the colours, but now I need your help. What colours do you see in these photos?

The hermit should be in shades of brown, the eelgrass in greens from dark to lemon-skin bright. And the background in shades of burgundy.

Catchin' a few rays. Lemon green, and warm browns. Pale orange eyestalks and flags, with blue trim.

Some older photos, just to check the colours:

Black, grey, white,and orange-brown, on washed-out green. A sort of cream of broccoli soup green. With plenty of cream.

The berries should be blue-black, with a hint of purple. The dark part of the leaves should be a bluish green. Or greenish blue.

There should be almost no colour here but greys.

No yellow. The grass is brown; there's a hint of orange on the tree.

Do you see the colours I see? Or should I re-calibrate my monitor again?

(I took this last photo on Christmas Day last year, sitting on a bench with Laurie on Blackie Spit, while he gathered his strength for the walk back to the car. It was our last outing. Ah, memories!)

Makeover

It's as if she's objecting to the extra attention her rival got last week. Val, the big burrowing anemone, has been open to her fullest extent, waving her tentacles about, grabbing everything that passes, all week, ever since I reported on the plumose anemone's adventures.

And she's dressed herself up in a new batch of multicoloured seaweeds, pink and tan, yellow and green. And dyed her tentacles pink.

Nice jacket, Val!

Up to now, she has usually shown up in ghostly tones of blue and grey, with a slightly green disc and mouth. But now her colours are stronger, and she's picked up a hint of pink. This is encouraging; in the wild, these anemones are more colourful, and even though she was badly damaged when I rescued her, she was pink and green back then.

Here she is, just a small blob, healing, September of 2012.

In the tank, she gradually lost her colour. I did everything I could to help; provided lots of light, since she was found on an open, sunny beach. It seemed to make no difference. I gave her a variety of good food, live and preserved; I surrounded her with assorted seaweeds, red and green. And she seemed healthy and hungry, but as pale as a medieval maiden languishing in a tower.

And now, she's slightly pink. And definitely green.

Wide, green mouth. And even in bright light from two flashes, the hint of pink is there.

I think the difference is that here, in her new location, the aquarium is directly beneath a big, sunny window. Back in Delta, the window faced north into a row of evergreens; the sun never reached the window, and the tank was on the far side of the room. There was twice the amount of artificial light, but something must have been missing.

I wonder what she'll be like once the days are longer and the sun is farther north.